"Story of an Hour"

Chelsey Wilkins


The Story of an Hour
Regression seems to be the theme that sets the mood of the story, "The Story of an Hour.” Written by Kate Chopin, the story tells the unfortunates of a woman living her last hour of life. Early in the story Mrs. Mallard is pronounced to have a heart problem which implies that there will be pathos used, most likely in the form of sympathy. Ironically, the story seizes to emphasize her disability, but to point out the difficulty of marriage in the late nineteenth century.

Diction was a definite point hit from the analytical rhetoric triangle. Chopin used a lot of open-ended words that could have duplicity of meaning behind them. For instance, Chopin used the word open frequently. “Facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair,” the quote uses the word open to describe desire in Mrs. Mallard’s life. It most nearly means that maybe she is trapped, leaving the chair near the open window to cope with her feelings of imprisonment. Chopin also repeatedly used the words escaped, abandoned, and even free which all indicate containment in some form.

Chopin left a somewhat hidden message throughout her story that tried to be sympathetic to the thought of death yet to show the discomforts of marriage. At the beginning of the story, Mrs. Mallard isn’t really given an identity. She was continually referred to as Mrs. Mallard which says a lot about how she is treated in her ordinary life. She is referred to as her husband’s property rather than a woman. Yet, later in the story, after the news about the death Chopin now gives us a name for Mrs. Mallard, Louisa. The changes in recognition lead me to believe that Louisa now felt free, free from the imprisonment of living for her husband instead of herself. The feeling of discontentment relates back to the views of the author and how she truthfully feels that marriage in the late nineteenth century was a trap.

“She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless, except when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams.” Figurative language became a must in the story. Chopin used the simile to compare her plain, slumped way of sitting in the chair, yielding her tears as a child does after crying themselves to sleep. The simile gives you an image of what she looks like as she sits in the chair looking out the window. Another example would be, “she was striving to beat it back with her will- as powerless as her two white slender hands would have been.” In comparison to the last simile quoted, Chopin used the simile to link Mrs. Mallard’s inability to beat the thing that was coming with her will. Chopin’s use of similes gave further description of the domestic problems Mrs. Mallard faced.

To conclude, Kate Chopin is a romantic, realist writer. Chopin wrote, “The Story of an Hour,” to tell the story of a woman suffering from heart problems, yet she is devastated and imprisoned in her marriage. Ironically, Mrs. Mallard dies as soon as she finds freedom. The story showed Chopin’s opinion on marriage in the late nineteenth century, which obviously she believes is a form of containment and will lead to regression.